Waymo has announced plans to bring its self-driving taxis to Tokyo in early 2025, beating Japanese automakers to the draw and stealing a march on Tesla’s robotaxi in the largest urban market for autonomous driving outside China.
This past week the Alphabet (Google) subsidiary revealed a partnership with Nihon Kotsu, the top taxi and limousine service company in Tokyo, and GO, Japan’s most popular taxi application.
Nihon Kotsu will be in charge of managing and servicing of Waymo vehicles. GO provides easy-to-understand directions in English.
First, Nihon Kotsu drivers will operate Waymo’s cars manually to map the central areas of the city – the heavily traveled and frequently visited districts of Shinjuku-ku, Shibuya-ku, Minato-ku, Chiyoda-ku, Shinagawa-ku and Koto-ku.
Asia Tiimes / ABC Flash Point News 2024.
Technology in the making changes the world upside down.
As there have been many crashes in the USA due to those “self drive ” automobiles ,many Americans have sued some of the big names —and lost ! Why ? because in the small print and in the eagerness of the US government to introduce them lobbied by big name auto manufacturers a law was introduced absolving the manufacturers from legal blame by stating that ultimately the DRIVER must pay attention to the actions of the vehicle at all times . In other words the AI is not infallible remember this when buying one of them–its affected by the weather… Read more »
Agree ….